


tineretului

by teenageraccoon



Series: this time-bound conscience [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, bucky isn’t actually present but the whole lil fic revolves around him so. he gets a spot, steve is depressed (and in denial about it!)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29902812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenageraccoon/pseuds/teenageraccoon
Summary: He falls asleep praying that a safehouse in Romania isn't the closest he ever gets.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson
Series: this time-bound conscience [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517654
Kudos: 7





	tineretului

He listens to Natasha’s warning on not chasing Bucky down, but that doesn’t mean he stops looking. JARVIS already knows Bucky is alive, he figures, and the technology is the only thing Steve thinks would be adequate for the job, so he asks.

Tony says yes. Not easily, of course, because he’s Tony and to do anything easily would be contrary to his nature. But when Steve snaps, “ _Stark_ ,” after two comments calling Bucky ‘murder-bot’ and then, more infuriatingly, ‘your brain-fried boyfriend,’ Stark shrugs.

“What?” he asks, as if he’s being unfairly accused of being uncivil. “Sure, you can use JARVIS. JARVIS, you got that? You’re helping old Steve-o here hunt down his long lost lover.”

Steve manages not to say anything threatening—it is courteous of Stark to let him employ the AI’s help, after all—but just barely.

JARVIS doesn’t come up with instantaneous results, and Steve wasn’t expecting him to. Now he’s got more time on his hands than he ever has; when he was young and sickly, his activities were always limited by what his body would allow him to do on any given day, but now there’s nothing stopping him. The city is full of things that are the same (he hadn’t realized how much he missed Brighton Beach until he was living there again) and full of things that are new, and he spends his time rotating from tourist attraction to tourist attraction. He goes to every museum within the five boroughs, sometimes with a sketchbook and sometimes without, to browse the galleries. He sits at the Cloisters and recreates a statue with his pencil. He walks through the Whitney and catches up on a century of missed art.

Sam calls regularly enough, but he can’t find the time to visit. Steve doesn’t hold it against him. He knows he’s busy, and it’s not like Steve’s at a lack of things to do.

Sometimes, though, it’d be nice to talk to someone properly.

JARVIS alerts him to something in the middle of September. He gets a text message on his cell phone (his possession of which made Clint laugh nearly to the point of tears—he didn’t understand why) which reads:

> Potential lead in Tineretului, Bucharest, ROU. Apartment found is most plausibly used as a safehouse. Appears to have been lived in since subject was last in the US. In poor condition. No sign of subject at safehouse.

The way _subject_ is used leaves a bad taste in Steve’s mouth, but he’s not going to try to teach semantics to an AI, although knowing Tony and the degree to which he built his perfect machine, it’s probably possible to do. He doesn’t want to go down that path either, so instead he writes back, _Thank you. Do you know when it was last used?_

 _My belief is that the subject raided the safehouse in question for anything that could prove valuable to him and left the rest_ , comes the written response. _There is no indication that any other party was present, including but not limited to, SHIELD, SWORD, or HYDRA._ Steve remembers Natasha’s comment about silver linings and tries to find one here: at least, he supposes, Bucky is surviving. Bucky is able to take care of himself, he is able to identify what is valuable to his continued survival and take advantage of it. He has some way of getting across international borders, and the lack of reporting on mysteriously dead bodies makes Steve hopeful that there are none.

He thanks JARVIS again, puts his phone down, and goes on a run.

He doesn’t return for hours. It’s not intentional, but it’s easy to lose track of time. He eats at a hole-in-the-wall family restaurant; the till and tables are run by a woman and the kitchen by her husband, both accented immigrants, and a young boy does homework at one of the few tables. Steve sits at one next to the window and traces the chips in the enamel and eats his borscht, which he ordered because the woman proudly said, “My husband makes good borscht. Cabbage soup, very good, best in all of Brooklyn,” and he couldn’t say no to a testimonial like that.

It is good borscht, although he hasn’t had a lot to compare it to. The final bill is $12.52, which he tells himself is not a lot of money now, that he has magnitudes greater sitting in his bank account. He pays with a twenty and tells the woman he doesn’t need change and she beams at him.

He gets home and washes up, then calls Sam. He owes it to him to keep him updated when he’s done so much to help Steve, but he also is hopeful, and he wants to hear that it isn’t misplaced. On the third ring, Sam says, “Yo.”

“Yo,” Steve responds because it’s funny. “JARVIS pinged an apartment in Romania today. He said it looked like a safehouse but there wasn’t any activity from Bucky or the alphabet soups.”

“How’s he know it was Bucky’s? Not accusing, just asking.”

“I know,” Steve says. It’s a fair question and he wondered the same thing briefly. “I’m not sure, honestly, but I’m going to just trust him on it. Something about this place got a hit but not any other abandoned apartment? I figure there’s gotta be something.”

Sam hums. “Well. I could request PTO, if you wanted to go check it out.”

“No,” Steve says instantly, “no, that’s okay. I’m– I worry that if he thinks I’m trying to hunt him, or like we’re closing in on him, then he’ll bolt.”

“That’s smart,” Sam agrees, “and you're probably right. I don’t think he would’ve let us find this place at all if he didn’t want us to—it kind of negates the point of a safehouse if it’s findable, you know?—but I still think you’ll never really find him if he thinks you’re chasing him. Besides, getting PTO approved is a pain in the ass anyways.” Steve laughs. Sam spends a while filling him in on what’s happening in D.C., since apparently the capitol is still functioning even less well than usual after what he’s come to think of simply as ‘the Triskelion’, and then about the struggles of trying to get a client into transitional housing, and when he yawns at the end of his story, Steve laughs again.

“I’ll let you go,” he says. “Thanks, man.”

“He’s out there,” Sam says, “he’ll come back. Just gotta give him time. You be good to yourself too, though.”

“Sure, ma,” Steve tries to joke. It falls just flat. “Thank you. I’ll keep you updated. As soon as I know, you know.”

“Yessir, see to it,” Sam says. “I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Yessir,” Steve mimics, and they say their goodbyes and hang up.

His apartment is still otherwise empty and a little too quiet, but he’s less lonely, and he falls asleep on the couch praying that a safehouse in Romania isn't the closest he ever gets.

**Author's Note:**

> teenageraccoon on tumblr, you all know the routine, thank you addie for everything and thank YOU for reading xo


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